


don't need to be saved

by gdgdbaby



Category: Saga (Comics)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Near Death Experiences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-07 22:02:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5472251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gdgdbaby/pseuds/gdgdbaby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Billy drifts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	don't need to be saved

**Author's Note:**

  * For [smallbrownfrog](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallbrownfrog/gifts).



> smallbrownfrog, your saga prompts were all so delightful! i've wanted to write a story about the freelancers for a long time, and you gave me the perfect opportunity. happy holidays, and i hope you enjoy this! ♥
> 
> content warnings for canon-typical violence, canonical character death, and one oblique reference to canonical child sexual abuse. spoilers through issue 30.

Billy drifts.

 

 

There was a time in Billy's life when all he wanted was a cape. The kind that superheroes wore, billowing behind him in the wind, a bold, blue color that would catch everyone's eye. But it wasn't just the cape itself; Billy wanted what it symbolized to people, too. Heroes wore capes. The Open Circuit taught him that.

Sophie didn't laugh much, even then, but she laughed at him about this. She always had a knack for laughing at the things that mattered to him the most. "You're such a kid," she said, and she was still taller than him at that point, so she could lean over and rub his hair hard enough to make it rise up with static. "It's not the cape that makes the hero. The hero makes the cape, and then some."

It took Billy a long time to figure out what she meant, and by then, he already knew he'd never be a hero.

 

 

He has lucid moments every once in a while. He recalls doctors in white coats, the sluggish IV drip attached to the perpetual ache inside his elbow, the dry rasp of his tongue in his mouth. His sister's face swimming above his, concern written all over her features, more than he's seen in years. Billy would've resented that, once. Now, he's too tired to feel anything but grateful. It's so hard to stay awake, difficult to piece anything longer than the flash of an image together, so most of the time, he just drifts. Not quite asleep, but eighty, eighty-five percent of the way there, enough that he can flip through old memories, watch them over and over again like episodes of the Circuit.

One memory is of his other Sophie, new Sophie, in the back of the ship with Gwendolyn before they caught up with those fugitives Wreath wanted so badly. Gwendolyn couldn't cook to save her life, apparently; "Never cultivated the necessary skill set," she said, smiling sharp and wide, like it was something to be proud of, but Sophie could. She was so small, but she could do so many things already. Billy didn't like thinking about most of them, reminded him too much of his sister, but this was okay. Sophie looked happy, at home here, directing Gwendolyn to grab things out of the rusty metal shelves, a huge ladle half as tall as she was clutched tight in her hand.

Half those ingredients were probably expired, but what Sophie made didn't taste half bad.

 

 

Once you're a freelancer, once you're in the system, you take on that moniker for life. There's something special about given names, yeah, especially when it comes to moony magic, the type that binds tightest, but it's more than that. More than just avoidance of a Wreath caster's strongest spells. It's easier to kill this way, is the reasoning. There's an extra layer there with the new name, a barrier to separate you from the job. You're not the one killing someone; the freelancer in you is, and he has a different name, a different face. Easier to detach yourself from what you're doing, compartmentalize it as—just _work_. Shoot, boom, kill, lick the muzzle. Move on to the next one.

Billy's never really had a problem with that part, anyway. He doesn't need to stick himself in some rigid persona or pretend he's someone else, pretend he's numb, just to pop a couple shots off. Killing is easy, perfunctory, a business transaction. Life is harder.

Sophie became one, first. Called herself the Brand, picked up a sidekick named Sweet Boy. She'd always wanted a dog growing up, but they were never in one place long enough for that to work out, and she already had her hands full looking after him. Once her license came through, she gave Billy the cold shoulder for weeks until he stopped calling her Sophie and switched to the Brand instead.

She was still Sophie in his head, though. Some habits are just too hard to shake.

 

 

He'd never met anyone like the Stalk before Sophie introduced them. Most freelancers picked names like they were drawing them out of a hat, stupid shit cut from the same cloth like the Apocalypse, the Doom, the Massacre—or, memorably, the Hung. Billy liked the Will; it was simple, to the point. It meant something.

The Stalk was—well. She was something. He'd never met anyone so viciously and wholeheartedly into freelancing. She didn't even need a sidekick, was so alive with it that he felt electric watching her work, the song and dance of interrogation, the way she teased information out of marks like a spider with her prey, and it was no wonder he woke up the morning after completing the assignment they'd been double-booked on, in a nondescript hotel room off one of the satellites in Sextillon's system with her claws two inches from his face, dripping venom.

"The Will," she said sweetly. "You stole my intel."

"I did," he said, lips pressed together. "Nothing personal."

"You stole my paycheck," she said, less sweet.

"Let me make it up to you," he said, and all eight of her eyes narrowed at him.

"I do believe that's the most interesting thing you've said in your whole life," she said, and she still sounded unimpressed and pissed off, but she retracted her claws, at least. A drop of venom slid off the tip and fizzed through the bedspread next to Billy's face. "Men," she muttered, disgusted. "Women do all the hard work and it gets snatched right out from under their noses."

She let him follow through, though. That was the important part.

 

 

Billy drifts, and drifts, and drifts. He thinks about Lying Cat, rescuing her from the jaws of her own mother, dead set on eliminating the runt of the litter. He always was a sucker for the little ones. Women had a way of telling truth from lies, and Lying Cat was more discerning than most.

Sophie didn't stop him from becoming a freelancer, but she wasn't pleased, either. License bounties were big by design, a constant rotating list of no-win scenarios designed to keep everyone but the best out, the kind of thing you'd have to kill a dragon from Demimonde for, but he did it in the end. Tore half a planet apart looking for a giant space fetus egg and nearly burned Lying Cat's tail off in the process. "The Brand's brother, eh," said the handler that added him to the database, after. "Hope you're half as good as she is." Still the hopeless kid following after his big sister, after all these years.

 

 

He mires himself in memory because that's easier than being awake. Being awake means resurfacing in a world where the Stalk is gone and the goddamn blueblood that killed her is still alive somewhere. It means Billy's stuck in a hospital bed instead of out there, killing him.

He almost doesn't register when the pain's gone, he's been trapped in his own head for so long, but he breathes in deep, chest expanding further than it has in a long time, and looks over to see a girl standing by his bed. She's taller now, older. "Sophie?" he croaks, body slack and aching with atrophy, and she opens her mouth and tells him things he doesn't want to hear, things that can't possibly be true. He'd rather go back to sleep, pretend this was all a bad dream, something his mind cooked up with all the drugs they've been pumping into him just to keep him alive.

Fuck, fuck. It isn't a dream. He's still the hopeless kid brother, following after.

Billy can't go back to sleep. There are people to avenge, and people to kill.


End file.
